


where they don't meet

by Visardist



Category: City & the City - China Mieville, Paris Burning (thecitysmith)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 06:23:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1768897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Visardist/pseuds/Visardist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Besźel and Ul Qoma share the same space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where they don't meet

Besźel and Ul Qoma share the same space.

They’re two different cities, any resident can tell you. But what does it mean? What does it mean when the house next to yours belongs to the other city, so that, every day, you do not acknowledge it as you walk down the street on your way to work? You unsee the man walking beside you as he unsees you. Each of you adjusts your gait to match your city, each of you speaks differing languages on your phone to your coworker.

Besźel and Ul Qoma share the same house.

It gives on two streets, one in each city, but if anyone inspected it carefully, they would realise that the crosshatch is such that there is no delineation between the two fronts at all, that they are in fact the same building.

Ul Qoma sings as she prepares her eggs, thoughtlessly maneuvering around her twin as he flips pancakes. They use different utensils, different dishware. They buy their own ingredients. They use the same toaster because it was given to them jointly by Budapest, but by tacit agreement, they only ever use it one at a time. (Lines down the centers of rooms are babyish.)

_You are not me. I am not you._

Everything they repair themselves. Besźel does the plumbing, Ul Qoma the electricity. They wash their dishes and do their laundry by hand, neither willing to risk an overlap of duty. To call in someone from outside is to bring a citizen from the other city into their space.

In the home of Ul Qoma and Besźel, all spaces are Breach. No matter that the Cities themselves enforce the unsight, the unnotice.

It is, outside Cities agree, one of the oddest Silent Wars, ever.

The humans have compared them to Budapest, who archives state were once three cities. They have been compared to Berlin, who bears the scars of the Wall still down his spine. But neither of those Cities were in remotely the same situation as Besźel and Ul Qoma.

For they are both Capital Cities, City-states, in their own right. What they fight over is not Capitalhood but their own space.

Istanbul, when Ul Qoma visits, compares it to two children squabbling over a favored teddy bear. Ul Qoma scowls and drinks her tea fiercely. For it is nothing like that- what they fight over is themselves, the very land that makes up their cities, their bones, their streets.

They each feel it when one of their citizens Breach. Not the brief moments, the sight-unsight of one who realises their mistake, but the big ones, where a body is forever tainted. Cannot keep their eyes on their city only. Cannot move their feet in their city’s typical gait. That is when they are press-ganged into Breach- the people, the force. Noun, not verb.

It’s always why big disasters are worse for the two of them than most other cities. Not only their selves, their buildings and bones, but their people lost. Not dead but taken.

Some days, Breach visits them. On certain days only one, on different days a few, and on edge days, (the days between seasons, summer to autumn, autumn to winter and warmer) the newest of Breach, the press-ganged. Their lost children. Besźel does not smile at them; Ul Qoma weeps openly and kisses their foreheads, whether or not they were formerly hers. The press-ganged shift uncomfortably in Ul Qoma’s pretty armchairs and Besźel’s stiff highbacks. There is none of the fervour there might have been when they were citizens.

Always, at least one press-ganged will notice the whiteboard on the wall, with its carefully, impossibly precise marking out of the streets and buildings of Besźel/Ul Qoma. The total areas are always coloured in with shades legal only to its City. (Or alternatively, the alter areas are coloured in with banned shades in that City. Former Ul Qomans see Besźel Blue and unsee it by habit, before remembering their new roles). The crosshatched areas are carefully filled in with lines of each, Besźel’s hatching left, Ul Qoma’s hatching right.

The Oversight Committee days are their favourite, when their citizens decide which  _dissensi_  zones, disputed areas, belong to which City. Those are sometimes crosshatched, sometimes not. When Bucharest comes to stay, he compares it to a mix of tug-of-war and keep-away. My area, not yours. Your area, not mine. It goes on and on, the reasons why they might want one spot and not another.

When Canberra naively asks Besźel why they aren’t conjoined twins- surely that makes the most sense- Besźel practically snarls and tugs her out onto his streets, takes her to the great rotting library that belongs in his totality. Shows her the shelves and shelves of books and then the artifacts of years past, the root of splitting, or the root of conjoining.

He tells her, “ _we don’t know_. Don’t you see? When we were,” he hesitates over the word  _children_ , “when we were not yet ourselves, when they made us over together. We tried to eliminate each other but we kept on failing, we left scars on each other and we didn’t watch our peoples until it was too late- until they’d each made us city-state Capital Cities. You think that one of us should have died, so that only one could be Capital, but we’re  _both_  Capitals sharing the same space. That… does things.”

Canberra returns to her own streets, unsatisfied with his answer, and Besźel returns to his own home, brushes his teeth in the mirror beside Ul Qoma, spits in synchronicity with her. They share the same bed, but always keep to their own side. They never speak but in post-it notes, pasted in shared spaces where they know the other will look.

They never touch but in their sleep, holding hands on the bare space where their pillows don’t meet.

**Author's Note:**

> For readers of The City & The City, Paris Burning is a Les Misérables fanfiction wherein Paris, and all other cities, are personified, and has currently grown into a rather monstrous community which may be found here. I have tried my best to personify the Cities within the bounds of that imaginary world.
> 
> For readers of Paris Burning, The City & The City is a book precisely about the two cities described herein. The cities overlap like laying two hands over each other. The citizens of each enforce the difference between cities, and Breach enforces when the citizens cannot. The original author China Miéville has explored this better in the book than I could have hoped to, even with the added dimension of personified Cities, ~~so I do suggest you try that book out, as well as his others.~~
> 
> [personal note: in the time since this was originally published, I have discovered some unpleasant truths about Miéville and no longer read his books. It's up to you.]
> 
> If you are readers of both, I hope I have been accurate to both fandoms.


End file.
